TBS 2-67 Cruisebook_Updated_7Jan23

A Tour of Duty in Vietnam
was my residence only for a few days. One afternoon, LtCol Foxworth
came charging through the FDC and hollered at me, “Wilkes, get your
gear together, you’ve got a battery. I’ll pick you up in thirty minutes.”
He was obviously upset about something.
I quickly threw everything I owned, except, of course, the
refrigerator, into a big green duffel bag and my big wooden foot
locker, and was waiting on the porch when Foxworth drove up in a
jeep pulling a small trailer. He looked at my stuff and said “You taking
all that?”
There was a CH­34 waiting for us at the LZ. It was a short hop to a
firebase on a mountain top very close to the DMZ. The helicopter had
to land outside the perimeter. LtCol Foxworth shouldered my duffel
bag, and I struggled with my foot locker on my shoulder for almost a
hundred yards to the center of the 1st Provisional 155 Towed Howitzer
Battery. The enemy had recently mustered some sort of attack on the
firebase and the smell of dead enemy bodies still uncollected on the
reverse northern slope permeated the air.
LtCol Foxworth was angry about something and relieved my
predecessor, a senior first lieutenant, on the spot and installed me as
the new commander. I was shocked to find out that my predecessor
was the only officer present in the battery, and the operations chief
was only a corporal. I asked the relieved commander if he would hang
around for awhile to help me snap in, but he was rather angry himself
and insisted on leaving on the same helicopter that brought me. It was
still running and waiting to retrieve LtCol Foxworth. They both left
the battery and I never did find out the reason for LtCol Foxworth’s
anger. (Afternote: Apparently, whatever Foxworth was angry about did
not ruin my predecessor’s career. I never saw him again, until a fall
day in 1996 when he, as a full colonel, was appointed to be in charge
of a retirement parade for me at the Marine Reserve Headquarters in
Kansas City – what irony!)
At first I felt overwhelmed. The battery’s fire direction center was in
a bunker with such a low ceiling one had to be seated or duck walk
while inside it. The battalion fire direction center had not yet taken
over primary gunnery with the new FADAC computer, and the battery
was still shooting solely from its own manual gunnery using the charts
and sticks.
But once inside the FDC, everything I had been taught at Fort Sill
came rushing back to me. I still feel a strong debt of gratitude for the
Army’s wonderful artillery school. It took me no time at all to fill the
responsibilities of the Fire Direction Officer in preparing the quadrant
and deflection data for the gun sights, as well as those of the executive
officer in issuing orders to the guns. On my first night as commander,
we shot fire missions all night often managing two at a time, and never
did we put a round in the wrong place.
So it began. For the next six months I would be living amidst the
earth shaking concussions of four big howitzers shooting 24/7. That
kind of assault on the human ear required the constant use of ear
plugs. The problem was the dust, and the dirt, and the smoke, and the
sweat made regular ear plugs too nasty too quickly, but I had a
solution for that. I took up smoking cigarettes. Being in a land with so
many people wanting to kill me made the dangers of smoking seem
inconsequential. Sometimes I even smoked World War II green pack
Lucky Strikes when they came with my C­rations, but mainly I
smoked filtered cigarettes, because every time I finished and field
stripped a filtered cigarette, I had a fresh clean new ear plug.
A‐65